Case Study: Mastercard achieves fast, granular monetization of transaction data with CARTO

Data Monetization for Credit Card Providers with Location Intelligence

Mastercard, a global payments company processing roughly 160 million transactions per hour, sought to monetize its transaction dataset while keeping cardholder privacy and security front and center. The team faced three core challenges: anonymizing and aggregating sensitive spatial transaction data, supporting insight at many spatial scales (including untethered — non-administrative — boundaries), and productizing a single platform that serves diverse industries and user roles.

In partnership with CARTO, Mastercard launched Mastercard Retail Location Insights (MRLI): an anonymized, aggregated platform built around three spend indexes and a Quadkey grid framework that enables boundary-free spatial analysis, time- and category-based filtering, and external data integration. MRLI delivers tailored UX for multiple industries, sub-1.5-second page loads at scale, granular cross-country retail insights, and advanced aggregation and integration features that turn transaction data into monetizable location intelligence.

Mastercard